Augmented and Virtual Reality on the Rise

November 10, 2017

by Darby Fike

I spend a part of my social media internship time looking into new technology, especially social media platforms. Part of my job is to understand how individuals use these platforms and how our business can use them to communicate effectively with that audience. What most people, including myself, are wondering is what platforms are going to stick around? Theses are some of the trends in social media and the new technology that goes along with them:

Instagram Stories has become increasingly popular over the past year and they’re projected to keep growing. They even have more daily users than Snapchat Stories. With the use of text, polls, stickers and augmented reality bitmojis, Instagram stories are only getting started with their impact on social media users.

Augmented reality will only increase on social media platforms and Snapchat is getting ready for it. With filters being one of Snapchats biggest successes, they want to build off of filters using augmented reality. It might also be possible over the next few years to take a selfie with a friend or a celebrity figure using AR.

This one is still developing but it is a platform to keep your eye on. Spaces is a platform meant for virtual reality. For those ready to embrace VR, this will be the platform for you. Be able to connect with friends, draw and be immersed in 360 degrees of VR.

Some of you are even asking – do people still use Twitter? This is a platform has been fluctuating and has even failed to gain new users over the past year. Right now, Twitter isn’t a growing platform. For Twitter to stay alive in the digital age, it is going to have to make some major adjustments moving forward.

Watching these trends gives you a better understanding on where the future of social media is going. Just as video is mainstream now on most platforms, augmented and virtual reality will be become just as common over the next few years on these platforms. Grasping these concepts now can help you and your business, stay on top of the social media world.